I have something to share!
Ok, first, I’m new here
(new in posts, I’ve read almost all the topics), second, sorry about my English, I’m from Chile (South America) and here we talk Spanish.
Now, lets focus on this:
Determining the Destination of Time Travel via Epoch and Time Gates
warmgun wrote:
Time Gates and Epoch have the unique ability of knowing a person's personal time. These things know how long a person has spent in certain times. These devices work under the following principle:
At time X, a person enters Epoch and chooses a certain time, Y, on Epoch's dial, where |X-Y| = Z. In time Y, the person stays for a certain duration, T. When he chooses time X from Epoch's dial, it does not take him to time X. It takes him to time X+T. So the total amount of time this person just traveled from time Y is Z. This quantity, Z, is constant. Likewise, when this person enters a time gate, the same rules apply. The only difference is that Z cannot be chosen from a dial, it is inherent to the time gate and is constant.
Granted, this may seem overly technical, but it provides great insight. For example, this rule proves that time MUST flow a the End of Time. While Epoch has it listed as infinity (inf), the time gates and Epoch treat time travel to and from it as inf-Z and inf+Z. In other words, time flows.
Think on the first trip to 600AD: Marle warps to 600AD. Then, a few minutes later, Chrono goes too and later on (some hours, I think) Lucca enters the gate, right? So, we have three DIFFERENT personal times to each character, because Marle spent more time in 600AD than Chrono, and Chrono spent more time than Lucca (Marle > Chrono > Lucca)
When they came back to 1000AD Lucca should arrive first, later on should arrive Chrono and then Marle (because T is different for each one), but we see them arriving at the same time
. So, the time gates only works with the Z variant that, we know, is constant:
The gate in Leene Square goes 400 years in the past or (the gate on 600AD goes 400 years in the future) so, Z=400.
At any point in time, if you enter to the gate, it’ll always take you to X-Z or X+Z instead of X±Z+T because T doesn’t have any relevance to the gate.
ie. You are in 1004 AD. You take the gate in Leene Square. That gate won’t take you to 600AD because Z=400, X-Z=Y => 1004-400=604, Y=604 <= you’ll arrive in this year. Now, say you stay there 3 years (why? I don’t know) so now X=607. lets go inside the gate!: X+Z=Y => 607+400=1007, Y=1007 <= you arrive in this year. Note that the gate doesn’t remembers your “personal time” (T), it only applies the Z variant (that is constant) to the actual time period.
It’s a little confusing, yes, I know, but basically is the same principle WITHOUT the T variant. It should read like this:
(Modified from the original principle )
“At time X, a person enters Epoch and chooses a certain time, Y, on Epoch's dial, where |X-Y| = Z. In time Y, the person stays for a certain duration, T so now Y=Y+T. When he chooses time X from Epoch's dial, it does not take him to time X. It takes him to time Y+Z. So the total amount of time this person just traveled from time Y is Z. This quantity, Z, is constant. Likewise, when this person enters a time gate, the same rules apply. The only difference is that Z cannot be chosen from a dial, it is inherent to the time gate and is constant.”
This explains quite well how time Gates works. As for the Epoch, since Belthasar is the Guru of Reason (he’s a VERY good scientist), and the computers in 2300AD were able to find Time Gates, I think that he managed to link the Epoch to the Gates in order to make it (the Epoch) capable to Time Travel.
